A Last Call for Young Men

Mikel Vause has emerged as one of Utah’s most prolific poets in recent years, and in A Last Call for Young Men we find him at his most exploratory, yet simultaneously familiar, moving easily between landscape meditation, war cry, and philosophical treatise as he ponders the nature of mankind, the environment, and, ultimately, the self. It is in these latter explorations that the book often finds its greatest voice, with Vause noting in “The Pride of Man” that “Man may be excused / for feeling some pride / at having risen,” but also warning that “Man still bears / in his bodily frame / the indelible stamp / of his lowly origin.” These poems are, in other words, not ones to pull punches, and so force readers to examine their own conceptions of the world. Both still and deep, A Last Call for Young Men will be a welcome addition to anyone already familiar with Vause, and a moving voice to add to the collections of the uninitiated.”

—Jon Lee, author of Ode to Brian: The Long Season; These Around Us; An Epidemic of Rumors: How Stories Shape Our Perception of Disease

These poems create a unique conversation with so many literary voices that have come before us. We are reminded to look back as we look forward, as we dive into the familiar and the unfamiliar. Through their details they remind us to look closely at what is around us, to ask the questions that need to be asked. In turn, the poems ask us to “seek wildness” to look into the “dark geography.” In the words of the poet, “In them we are / Seeing Ourselves / As we reach eagerly / To Catch the Lightening.” Reader, accept that invitation from A Last Call for Young Men.

—Laura Stott, author of In the Museum of Coming and Going

A Last Call for Young Men is a collection that juggles the important paradoxes: life and death, war and peace, love and fear, silence and song, the material and the spiritual, and hopelessness and hope. I hope that you read it and enjoy it and read it again. That’s what I did.

—Ryan Ridge, author of American Homes